


C6

by earlgreytea68



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-06 13:48:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17346332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68
Summary: According to Patrick Stump's Wikipedia:Stump possesses a high-lyric tenor vocal range and a falsetto that spans three octaves and eight semitones. His range extends from E2 to C6.





	C6

**Author's Note:**

> Heyyyyyy, it's a "I JUST MET A HUGE DEADLINE, HERE'S A CELEBRATION FIC" fic. 
> 
> Thanks to Aja for having enough musical knowledge to know this was an impressive vocal range.

Patrick has this rule that Pete completely understands and totally disagrees with: no sex on show eves. Only Patrick doesn’t call them “show eves.” Patrick said, “We shouldn’t fuck the night before a show,” because Patrick is the soul of romanticism. Pete said, “You are the soul of romanticism,” and Patrick rolled his eyes, and Pete said, “Can we at least agree that the rule is we shall not fuck on show eves?” and Patrick said, “No, what the fuck is a ‘show eve,’ if you keep talking about show eves we might never fuck ever again.”

The hollowest of threats, as Pete promptly proved, but still: there’s this rule.

Pete gets why the rule exists. Once this thing had become a Thing, Patrick thought that post-coital shows lacked energy. Pete thought it was kind of nice, all that warm content afterglow glossed over their songs, but Patrick thought Pete’s lyrics needed the opposite of that, and he probably wasn’t wrong. And it turned out that years’ worth of sexual tension couldn’t be totally replicated but could be approximated by a little bit of denial. They don’t have sex on show eves; the shows are tight and tense and thrumming, vibrating with their awareness of each other; afterward they get to fuck like bunnies.

So Pete totally gets the rule but it leaves with him a lot of time on his hands and he uses this time to fight on the internet.

It starts innocently enough, because he’s bored, and he’s Googling Patrick, the way he does when he’s bored, and Patrick is sound asleep next to him because Patrick long ago learned to sleep through all of Pete’s insomnia and then some, and Pete pokes through old photos of Patrick and ponders whether he can convince him to do sideburns again – maybe Pete will offer to cut his hair as a bribe, actually – and then somehow he’s on some random message board and people are having an argument over Patrick’s vocal range.

Pete frowns and reads over people being sneering about _tendency toward melisma – if you can call it that_ and _there’s no way he’s a high-lyric tenor, it’s not like he’s an opera singer_.

Pete creates an account in the name of LunchboxLove and posts, _You don’t have to be an opera singer to have a beautiful voice. Patrick Stump’s voice is incredible and his range is miraculous._

No one replies to him immediately, which isn’t surprising since it was hardly a hip, happening forum, so Pete goes to Patrick’s Wikipedia and edits in, _Patrick Stump is widely believed to have the most beautiful voice of any lead singer in any band._

Pete puts his phone away and snuggles up to Patrick and tries to sleep.

The next day they play a concert, have energetic bus sex, and fall asleep in a tangled heap, lulled by the rhythm of the road underneath them.

The day after that Pete finds out that that the assholes policing Wikipedia entries rejected Pete’s addition, and even worse someone replied to his post on the forum with _Wow, we’re trying to have a serious academic conversation here, we don’t need fangirls showing up_.

Pete sits staring furiously at his phone and thinking, _This means war_.

Pete types back a response. _It’s hardly fangirling to make a TRUE STATEMENT about Patrick’s vocal range._

Then he flips back over to Wikipedia and edits in, _Patrick Stump has the gorgeous voice of an angel._

Patrick says, “What are you doing?” and Pete jumps a mile, almost flinging his phone out of his hand.

“What?” he yelps.

Patrick’s head is cocked at him curiously. “You look furious. What’s up?”

“I thought you were sleeping,” says Pete.

Patrick looks pointedly out the bus window. “It’s four p.m.”

“Oh, right,” says Pete faintly, because he only ever has a vague idea about time.

“Are you arguing on the internet?” Patrick drops onto the couch with him. “Don’t argue on the internet.” Pete crawls his way into a cuddle with Patrick, because it’s not like Patrick can possibly expect to sit next to him and not be cuddled. “What are you arguing about?” Patrick asks, his lips against Pete’s temple.

“You,” Pete admits.

“Pete,” Patrick sighs.

“Look,” Pete defends himself, “there are people on the internet who don’t think you’re the best thing ever, and that has to stop.”

Patrick takes his phone out of his hand and tosses it negligently across the bus, where it skids onto the tiny dining table. “You are never going to convince everyone on the internet that I’m the best ever.”

“But you _are_ ,” Pete insists, distressed.

“You shouldn’t fight with strangers on the internet but it is kind of hot that you’re defending my honor,” says Patrick.

“Hmph,” says Pete, not mollified, but he pushes Patrick down onto his back. “I’m doing a terrible job, turns out the first person I’ve got to convince you’re the best ever is _you_.”

Patrick grins up at him. “How do you propose to accomplish it?”

“I’ve got ideas, Tricky,” Pete assures him primly, and unbuttons Patrick’s jeans. “One of them was editing your Wikipedia.”

“I hope your other ideas are better than that one,” says Patrick.

Pete grins.

***

Pete is dozing blissfully, in the glorious haze of shared orgasms, when Patrick makes a _hmm_ sound. That is not the sound of someone who is likewise blissfully dozing.

“What,” Pete mumbles against Patrick’s skin.

“Patrick Stump has the gorgeous voice of an angel?” says Patrick.

“You do,” Pete replies.

“Pete. You can’t just make statements like that in my Wikipedia entry.”

“Statements like what?” demands Pete, giving up on his blissful doze. “ _True statements_?”

Patrick rolls his eyes. “Statements with no support.”

“Oh, should I add in some support?” Pete takes Patrick’s phone and proceeds to click through until he’s created an account and edited the Wikipedia to add support. _See Fall Out Boy’s entire discography, 2003-present_. He shows Patrick triumphantly. “Huh? How’s that?”

“Fuck,” Patrick says, “they had better not be able to trace that edit to me. That’s all I need is some fucking headline about how Patrick Stump edits his own Wikipedia entry to call his voice angelic.”

“Oh, relax,” Pete tells him, “nobody cares that much.”

“ _You_ care that much,” Patrick points out. “You’re having some epic battle in your head. I know what your face looks like when you’re having an epic battle in your head. You make that face a lot.”

“I fight a lot of epic battles.”

“You definitely think you do,” Patrick agrees generously.

“They called me a Patrick Stump fangirl,” Pete pouts.

“How dare they deliver such an insult,” replies Patrick, “when everyone knows that you are my _head_ fangirl.”

“‘Fangirl’ implies that I am not presenting an objective statement about the beauty of your voice. ‘Fangirl’ is a derogatory term. Wrongfully so, because fangirls are awesome, I love fangirls, but I’m just saying, _they_ don’t love fangirls. They’re insulting my ability to evaluate your voice. Which, let me tell you, is fucking _hilarious_ , since the past two decades would tell you that I am the fucking _best_ when it comes to evaluating your voice.”

“Okay,” Patrick says, taking his phone out of Pete’s hand and putting it on the bedside table. “Two things.” He coaxes Pete into a cuddle that Pete determines to be disgruntled about. “One, literally no one in the universe doubts that you’re the best at evaluating my voice.” Patrick speaks into the warm, sensitive skin behind Pete’s ear, which is nice.

“Fuckin’ A,” grumbles Pete.

“Two, I had no idea Wikipedia was such a vicious place.”

“Everywhere on the internet is a vicious place,” says Pete, “but I got called a fangirl on a stupid forum about stupid voices where the stupid people had no fucking idea what they were talking about.”

“That’s a lot of stupid in one place,” remarks Patrick.

“Exactly.”

“Did you really get into an argument about my voice on some random forum?”

“They were being dismissive because you don’t sing opera. You could totally sing opera if you wanted. Hey, you know what?”

“Uh-uh,” says Patrick. “No way.”

“I have a great idea.”

“Nope.”

“You should sing opera.”

“That’s not happening,” says Patrick.

“Hmm,” says Pete thoughtfully, already considering how he can get Patrick to agree to this.

“Oh, my God,” says Patrick, and grabs his phone. “Show me the fucking forum before I find myself having to learn some kind of aria for our next show.”

Pete taps through and finds the forum and shows it to Patrick.

Patrick reads through the thread about him without any outward reaction, then puts his phone aside and says definitively, “Those people are all assholes. I didn’t have any formal training because I was a sixteen-year-old scene kid, not some trust fund kid in the Hamptons. And they have no idea the range I’m capable of. So whatever. Leave it.”

“Patrick, all of that is a reason for me to fight with them more,” Pete insists.

“Leave it,” Patrick says. “We’ve got all these hit records that say good things about my voice. If you’re really worried about stroking my ego properly, I’ve got some suggestions.”

Pete’s willing to indulge Patrick’s suggestions, but also, he’s not surrendering this war. It’s like Patrick doesn’t even _know_ him.

***

If Patrick didn’t want him to fight on the internet, then Patrick wouldn’t sleep. It was as simple as that.

Because Patrick is sleeping, clearly Patrick is okay if he continues to fight on the internet.

This voice forum is the bane of Pete’s existence. He got a reply that read, _How is claiming he has a MIRACULOUS voice a true statement???? He has a voice. It’s not a miracle he has a voice._ and so Pete had to reply, _I was referring to his *range,* not his *voice.*_ And now he’s looking at another reply.

This reply reads:

_His range is decent._

Decent. The word burns into Pete’s very _soul_. After he murders the person who posted this, when he dies and goes to Rock Heaven or whatever and has to defend his actions, he’s going to say, _They called Patrick’s voice ‘decent’_ , and angels will fall out of the sky in shock at the sheer wrongness of this statement.

His range is _decent_.

It’s like they’ve never heard him sing. Pete replies back, _Have you ever heard him fucking sing???????_

Then he furiously clicks over to Patrick’s Wikipedia entry. Over the course of the past week, Pete has had the following additions to Patrick’s Wikipedia rejected:

\--Patrick Stump’s voice might be able to cure world hunger.

\--Patrick Stump’s voice is so beautiful songbirds cease singing when they hear him.

\--Patrick Stump’s vocal range is totally miraculous and anyone who says otherwise is an idiot.

\--Patrick Stump’s voice saved Pete Wentz’s life once, and keeps on saving it every day.

Pete thinks it’s downright cruel that last addition got rejected, since that was so very provably true, but Wikipedia didn’t really want him to leave a citation that was just his cell phone number so that people could call him and he could tell each and every one of them personally about the magic of Patrick’s voice.

Pete frowns at Patrick’s very boring and inaccurate Wikipedia page, which is the worst representation of the Patrick he knows, it’s utterly painful to him. It has always been painful that people don’t see Patrick right, but he at least thought they understood how beautifully he sings. His entire worldview has been rocked, he feels like the planet is a less nice place than he’d always thought.

Pete puts his phone aside, fidgety and restless, and exhales up at the ceiling. It’s a hotel night, and Patrick is sound asleep next to him, and Pete glances over at him, at his face smushed into his pillow, at the bedhead of strawberry blond hair.

“Patrick,” he whispers.

There’s no response.

Pete edges closer, until his nose is almost touching Patrick’s. “Patrick,” he hisses.

Patrick grunts and flutters his eyes open, and then jumps away from him, startled. “Jesus fucking Christ, what are you doing?”

“Did I wake you?” asks Pete.

“Yes, you woke me,” says Patrick. “You stared at me from right in front of my face and said my name, what did you think was going to happen?”

“Patrick, the world is a terrible place,” says Pete mournfully.

“What? Why? What happened?”

Pete sighs and cuddles up against Patrick. “It just is.”

“Hey,” Patrick says softly, his breath against Pete’s temple and his hand soothing on his back. “No, it’s not. I promise. At least. Not all the time. Not the way it feels right now.”

Pete closes his eyes and says, “Sing me something.”

So Patrick sings to him.

Pete sleeps. And in the morning, while Patrick is sleeping late, Pete sits in the living area of the suite and edits Patrick’s Wikipedia entry. _When the world feels like a terrible place, Patrick Stump’s voice makes it better._

It’s been rejected by the time they finish playing their show but Pete doesn’t find out until well after their post-show fuck.

***

The guidelines for Wikipedia suggest that any additions be “verifiable” and “neutral.” Pete gives a lot of thought to this. “Verifiable” and “neutral.” What’s a verifiable and neutral assessment of Patrick’s voice?

Pete says, “Hey, Trick.”

Patrick is wearing headphones and listening to GarageBand playing back at him, though, so he doesn’t hear him.

Pete kicks him.

Patrick looks up with a scowl, taking one headphone off one ear. “What?”

“What’s something verifiable and neutral about your voice?”

“I’m a tenor,” Patrick says, and replaces his headphone.

It strikes Pete like someone just rang a bell in his head. _Patrick is a tenor_. Right. Exactly. This whole time, Pete’s been defending Patrick’s vocal range, and instead of finding adjectives to describe it, Pete can quantify Patrick’s vocal range.

Pete types into Patrick’s Wikipedia furiously. _Stump possesses a high-lyric tenor vocal range and a falsetto that spans three octaves and eight semitones. His range extends from E2 to C6._ Totally completely neutral. _Verify that!_ Pete thinks triumphantly.

The assertion survives. It doesn’t get rejected.

Pete grins at it and goes back over to the voice forum. He creates a new account, LastKicking, and triumphantly pastes the sentences in. And then he adds, _According to Stump’s Wikipedia._

“See if you can find a way to argue with _that_ ,” he tells his computer.

“What are you doing?” asks Patrick. “Are you still arguing with the internet?”

“Nope,” Pete says blithely, closing his laptop. “Want a blowjob?”

“Wow, that was an extremely suspicious transition, but okay, I’m not going to turn down a blowjob.”

“That’s my Trickster,” says Pete happily.

***

When Pete wakes up, Patrick is watching him narrow-eyed from the opposite side of the hotel room. He’s going to start yelling at him for something – Pete has had a lot of practice recognizing that look – but he waited for him to wake up before he did it, and this is how Pete knows Patrick really loves him, even when he’s angry.

“Peter Wentz,” Patrick says.

“Uh-huh,” says Pete, because he can’t deny that’s his name.

“What is this in my Wikipedia?”

“Is it the fact that it leaves me out of your early musical influences? Because yeah, I’m appalled by that, too.”

“ _No_ ,” says Patrick. He reads from his phone. “Stump possesses a high-lyric tenor vocal range and a falsetto that spans three octaves and eight semitones. His range extends from E2 to C6.”

“Verifiable,” Pete says, “and neutral.”

“And untrue,” Patrick says flatly.

“What? You’re a tenor. You’re a high-lyric tenor.”

“E2 to C6. _C6_. Do you have any idea what that range is? That range is unbelievable, incredible, absurd. I don’t have that range. I can’t hit a C6.”

“Patrick.” Pete can’t believe Patrick is arguing about this with him. It’s so ridiculous that he can’t help that he’s laughing. “You can hit a C6.”

“Are you _high_ right now?”

“High on Patrick Stump’s angelic voice,” Pete says.

“I can’t hit a C6. I have never hit a C6.”

“You could hit a C6,” Pete says confidently. “Come back to bed, let’s work on it.”

“You’re out of your mind,” Patrick says, but he puts his phone aside and stands. “You’ve got to fix my Wikipedia.”

“Trick-a-doodle-doo,” Pete says, pulling him down onto the bed, “sometimes I think you’ve never heard yourself sing.”

“And sometimes I think you’ve never heard me sing,” says Patrick.

“Yeah, no, I’m the only one who can really hear you sing,” says Pete.

***

The voice forums are as dubious of the C6 claim as Patrick. Pete can’t believe how many scoffing replies he’s gotten. They are apparently going to work their way song by song through Patrick’s discography to verify the claim. Well, thinks Pete. At least this should get them a few more pennies in the royalty stream.

Pete finds Patrick watching television and interrupts him to say this much more important sentence. “The voice forum doesn’t think you can hit a C6.”

“I can’t,” says Patrick. “Move, you’re blocking the TV.”

“Patrick,” Pete says calmly. “It is very important to me that you believe in yourself.”

Patrick looks at him for a moment, and then Patrick turns the television off and sits up. “Okay. What’s this all about?”

“What?” asks Pete blankly.

“This C6 thing.”

“I put in your Wikipedia about your voice—”

“No. Not the history of the C6 saga. I know all about the history of this whole thing. I mean: What’s it about?”

“I told you what it’s about,” Pete says, frustrated.

“Tell me again,” suggested Patrick.

“I don’t like when people don’t think you’re the best thing ever,” Pete reminds him. He’s about to say more except Patrick interrupts him.

“And I don’t like when people don’t think _you’re_ the best thing ever.”

Pete stills, caught off-guard. “What?” he says.

“I don’t like when people don’t think you’re the best thing ever,” says Patrick, and shrugs.

“But…” Pete shakes his head a little bit. “You’re changing the subject. _You’re_ the best thing ever.”

“Nope.” Patrick looks so blithely unconcerned by the absurdity of what he’s saying.

“Patrick,” Pete says. “Okay. Be serious. This is a serious issue.”

“I’m being serious. I hate every single terrible, untrue thing people say about you. They make me furious. I’d love for them to stop. I’d love to delete your entire Wikipedia entry and replace it with _None of you even fucking know him, so fuck off_.”

“Patrick,” says Pete. “That’s stupid. You can’t do that.”

“Why not?” Patrick gives him a mild look.

“Because that’s – I mean –” Pete huffs with frustration. “That’s not verifiable and neutral.”

“The fact that they don’t know you is completely verifiable. You’re right that it might not be neutral.”

“Patrick, I am trying to have a serious conversation here about—”

“About how I’m the best ever.”

“Yes.”

“And I’m trying to have a serious conversation about how _you’re_ the best ever.”

“But that’s not true,” Pete says. “What I’m saying is _true_.”

“Pete,” Patrick says, and smiles at him that very gentle smile he gives him sometimes. They’ve spent so much of their lives on film and that smile has been captured so many times, that Patrick-to-Pete smile, and still Pete can’t accurately analyze where its effectiveness comes from. “Are we literally going to argue now over which of us is the best ever?”

“No, we’re not going to argue, because I’m right,” says Pete, but he says it reluctantly, because Patrick is _smiling_.

“Can we not just agree that we’re both the best ever?” Patrick asks.

“No, because that’s stupid,” says Pete stubbornly. “What are the odds that the two best ever people would end up together.”

“Pretty fucking high, I think,” says Patrick.

Pete sighs and collapses onto the couch next to Patrick. He looks at the blank television and says, “Do you think people don’t realize how great you are because they think I’m making it all up when I talk about you? Do people not know how great you are because of me?”

“No,” Patrick says. “I think people know everything they know about me entirely because of you. I think nobody would even know my fucking name if it wasn’t for you endlessly talking about how great you think I am. I always feel bad that I don’t think I’ve repaid the favor enough.”

Pete looks at him. “You are great. It wasn’t a favor I was giving you, me going around saying that.”

“I really don’t care what anyone else thinks,” remarks Patrick. “I do care that somehow you think, in that Pete-Wentz head of yours, that I could hit a C6. I love so much that you think that. I don’t need anyone else to.”

Pete takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly. “You could hit a C6. I’m right about that.”

“Honestly, Pete? I’ve kind of lived most of my life hoping that you were going to turn out to be right about me. So who the fuck knows. I can probably can hit a C6. Pete Wentz said so, and he’s the best ever. Check his Wikipedia.”

“That’s not even close to verifiable and neutral,” Pete manages.

“Wikipedia sucks,” says Patrick, and kisses him.

 


End file.
